Joseph known only from his book The Art of Cookery Refin’d and Augmented, whose title-page declares him to have been ‘chiefe cook’ to King Charles I. This was published in 1654, five years after the execution of the King. It is curious that no trace of Cooper survives in records of the royal household, although the names of other ‘master cooks’ are there. It seems clear that he did not rise from the ranks in the King’s kitchen; and probable that he only cooked for the King during the confused period of the Civil War, in the 1640s (Richardson and Isabell, 1984).
